Released this week, the image shows a region of the Taurus molecular cloud—about 450 light-years away from Earth. The nebula is full of stars in various stages of formation, from very new to old and established.

Image courtesy T.A. Rector and H. Schweiker, WIYN/UAA/NOAO/NSF

Return Trip to Earth

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft returned three International Space Station crew members to Earth after a five-month stay in orbit.

Fireworks erupted from the sun on May 12 when an X1.7-class solar flare burbled into view. X-class flares are the most intense categorization; the number behind it describes its strength. An X2 is twice as powerful as an X1, and so on.

Like a toddler let loose on a wall with a black marker, dust devils on Mars leave black streaks across sand dunes in a picture released May 15 by the University of Arizona HiRISE project, a satellite orbiting the red planet.

Wind from the dust devils picks up the surface layer of lighter-colored sand, exposing the darker layer underneath. (See more pictures of Mars.)

Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA

Starry Night

The Milky Way stretches across a winter night's sky over Chile's La Silla Observatory in an image released May 13 by the European Space Agency.

Located in the Atacama desert (map), La Silla is perched on a ridge that's 7,800 feet (2,400 meters) high.

The instruments pictured, from left to right, are the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope (with snow on the dome), the ESO 1-meter Schmidt telescope, the 3.58-meter New Technology Telescope, and the ESO 3.6-meter telescope.

Photograph courtesy José Francisco Salgado, ESO

Celestial Motion

A telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tuscon, Arizona, captured an image—released this week—of a 45,000-year-old nebula moving through space.

The orange smear (upper right) is a result of Nebula Sh2-68's travels, while the blue haze in the center is caused by energized atoms of oxygen. (See more pictures of nebulae.)